In traditional transit systems, gatelines can be used to regulate the flow of transit users from one area to another. For example, at a subway station, a gateline may be used to regulate the flow of transit users entering and/or exiting the station. Transit users may need to swipe, tap, or otherwise present transit media for scanning at a fare gate to enter a platform of a station. And in some stations, transit users may need to do something similar when exiting a station (e.g., to enable the transit system to calculate a fare, which may be based on both origin and destination of travel).
The configuration of the gateline can vary, depending on desired functionality. Typically, a gateline is configured to maximize the amount of throughput of transit users. For a given gateline that may have, for example, 10 fare gates, five of the fare gates may be configured to allow passengers to exit, and the remaining five fare gates may be configured to allow passengers to enter, assuming a roughly equal amount of traffic moving in both directions. Fare gates may be configured differently, but changing the configuration of fare gates often requires a transit system employee to adjust the configuration manually (e.g. by inputting a configuration to a station server communicatively coupled with the gateline, which can cause the fare gates of the gateline to adjust their individual configuration accordingly).
Manual configuration adjustment can be problematic for various reasons. When a platform or other area becomes crowded, it can become unsafe. Thus, it may be desirable to limit throughput to the overcrowded area and/or increase throughput out of the overcrowded area. But it can be difficult for an employee to reconfigure the gateline at these times when overcrowding is an issue, because the employee may be involved in other tasks (which may be worsened by the overcrowding).